Various Artists GSoC project

[Jeff Mitchell]

Matt 'Murph' Finnicum wrote:
>     I thought it did :)
>     The point was just that users will be grateful if you follow some
>     (potentially half-baked) standard that works rather than thinking you
>     got it better than everyone else and implementing
>     your own speific solution (NIHS syndrome).
> 
>  
> I don't think it's a good idea to just decide to do nothing. Album
> Artist / Various Artists support is very important to people trying to
> manage a large collection.

Agreed.  People want support for this, somehow.

> Using a custom tag would not negativly affect other players, would it?

No.

> Maybe Amarok should just use a custom tag untill the standard is written
> (at which point it could easily translate the custom tag into the
> standardized version).

I wouldn't hold your breath for a standard ever being written.  Until
you get Apple and Microsoft to agree on how to do it -- which they
won't, as they already have their own entrenched methods -- it will
never be a standard.  Even if you get various OSS/non-OSS programs to
agree on a standard, portable media players are unlikely to ever adopt
it, making its utility limited to a small, niche market.

> I also think the foobar2000 standard is a very good way to deal with it
> in the mean time. Again, it's misusing the tags a bit, but I'm sure that
> most users will appreciate it and I'm sure it could be updated when the
> real standard comes out.

It's not a standard.  It's a suggested method.  Calling it a standard
lends it too much credence -- which is not to say it's not useful, but
let's keep it in perspective here.

> You could even have an option or two to decide how to deal with this if
> you wanted to force the decision onto the user. But just not having the
> support shouldn't be acceptable for Amarok.

Why shouldn't it?  Not being a Various Artists user, I don't even really
know what it is you're all clamoring for -- I've certainly never missed
it, because I put the information in the track title frame where it
pseudo-belongs.  But I have seen lots of chatter through the years about
Various Artists, enough to know that nobody ever agrees on how it should
be implemented in Amarok anyways -- not in terms of tags, but in terms
of the UI.  Everyone wants it fixed somehow (and for some reason), but
no one can agree on any aspect of how to fix it, and everyone always
ends up unhappy with any proposal (or actual work).

--Jeff

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